FEMA Spends More Preparing for Terrorism Than Hurricanes

Re:FEMA Spends More Preparing for Terrorism Than Hurricanes by Shivetya on Thursday August 27, 2020 @12:26PM (#24295285)

FEMA is misguided in that is should be dispensing aid to states and cities in need and not instead doing the relief itself. Too often it actually steps in and blocks cities and states from properly administering aid to those in need. In effect, it should be handing out block grants and insuring that states don't conflict with each other, not be the source of conflict.

One major problem FEMA faces is not how it allocates its fund between disasters and terrorism it is instead the more of those funds land in states which have representation in Congress committees which exercise oversight on FEMA. Terrorism funding goes to police mostly and some to fire and related but the police and sheriffs of this country have outsized power in politics; related - the reason why defund the police was quickly dropped from political platforms

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Re:FEMA Spends More Preparing for Terrorism Than Hurricanes by makomk on Thursday August 27, 2020 @12:45PM (#24295538)

This would work great if every state and city government was competent and good at disaster relief. In general they're not, and FEMA already rely too much on having competent local government that they can co-operate with - in particular, I get the distinct impression that a lot of the disaster relief problems in Puerto Rico which were blamed on FEMA and the federal government were actually the result of the local government being completely and utterly useless (infamously so, even).

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